CISC and RISC are two approaches to CPU architecture. CISC uses a complex instruction set that can perform multiple operations in one instruction, aiming to reduce the number of instructions per program. However, this comes at the cost of more cycles per instruction. RISC uses a simplified instruction set but is able to achieve higher performance through pipelining and reducing cycles per instruction, even if it increases the number of instructions per program. Key differences are that CISC sacrifices cycles per instruction for fewer instructions, while RISC does the opposite. Examples given are Intel Pentium as CISC-based and PowerPC as RISC-based.